Refugee Family Reunion Scheme

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As my noble friend will guess from the questions I have had to date, we paused the family reunion scheme on 4 September pending a review, and we expect to bring forward proposals by April of next year. I am not in a position to give my noble friend a foretaste of what those proposals will be, because the purpose of us pausing the scheme is to examine the reasons why the increase has happened; to look at the pressures that have brought, potentially, 18% of reunion visas from Syria, 17% from Iran and 12% from Afghanistan; to look at what the drivers of that are and at how we can provide an appropriate level of family reunion—but in a context whereby we put some more strictures on what family reunion means.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The Government have rightly suspended the refugee family reunion route while they draft new rules for the scheme. The Prime Minister has said that this was because he wanted to end the

“golden ticket to settling in the UK”.

Surely, the Minister must accept that the Government’s inability to implement any meaningful policies to stop illegal migration and their failure to deter the recent small boat crossings is indeed a golden ticket?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord and I have had much discussion on this issue in the last weeks and months. He knows that we have an honest disagreement about how we control some of those issues. He is conflating family reunion and asylum claims with individuals who are potentially coming here through irregular migration by small boats, funded by criminal gangs. He knows we are putting a border command in place to tackle those gangs. He knows we are putting in place measures to criminalise that activity. He knows we are putting in measures to try to stop that, including a scheme with France and scrapping the failed Rwanda scheme. There is an honest disagreement between us, but I hope he will recognise that the Government are acting responsibly in looking at the drivers of family reunion to see if we can make an honest assessment, rather than letting the figures rise uncontrollably, as happened under the last year of the previous Government.